Becky looked around genuinely surprised. "Why—a mere mouthful, a taste, a tidbit, was all any of you had. See—there's a pigeon or two left, and half a duck, and part of the beef pie—why, you do but peck at your food, all of you, like poor birds!" she insisted.
Chris laughed. Ned Cilley, picking his teeth with his habitual ship's nail, was already falling asleep, and Amos, his head on one hand, propped himself up amid a jumble of empty plates. Peacefulness and content lay everywhere in the room, warm as the firelight and as pervasive.
Chris turned. "Anyhow, thanks again. I'll be back," and he went along to knock at Mr. Wicker's door.
Inside, the ruby damask curtains were drawn close across the windows, for it was nearly dark, and the fire here too was as red as the rose that was the joy of a princess of China. Chris closed the door behind him, looking around with a smile at the familiar walls and objects he had missed and dreamed of, many a time, the table with its flowers in a fine China bowl, the desk between the windows with the long-feathered quill pens and the papers marked by Mr. Wicker's meticulous hand, the carved cupboard at the end of the room, and the Indian rug of many colors under his feet. Last of all he brought his look back to Mr. Wicker, sitting in the winged leather chair.
Mr. Wicker had a strange expression on his face. He was smiling but at the same time he looked sad. And for the first time Chris saw some curious-looking garments folded neatly on a stool before the fire. Mr. Wicker, watching him as he gazed about, saw the question in his eyes. "Do you not recognise these things, Christopher?" he asked.
Chris looked more closely, touching nothing. His voice was bewildered. "Well—it seems to me I may have seen them before—they sort of look familiar, but—I couldn't be sure."
His master's voice was gentle. "They are your twentieth-century clothes, my lad. The ones you wear in your own time. And deeply as it hurts me to say it, the moment has come for you to put them on."
Chris raised startled worried eyes to the dark penetrating ones watching him so quietly from the high-backed chair. "Not yet? I don't have to go now, do I, sir?" And as he saw insistence in Mr. Wicker's face he began to expostulate as a child does when it wants to retard its bedtime.
"But I've scarcely got back—I mean, here. And we've only had one talk—I'm sure there'll be other things I've forgotten to say that you should know—"
He threw out his hands as if to grasp at something that might hold him there.